Daily Beast Deletes Olympic Grindr Story after Complaints

The Daily Beast unpublished its article about Olympic athletes using dating and hookup apps in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The article may have outed some gay athletes.

In a 217-word note to readers, the Daily Beast again apologized for possibly outing gay Olympic athletes, calling its unpublishing “an unprecedented but necessary step.”

As iMediaEthics reported previously, the Daily Beast first edited its Aug. 11 story by Nico Hines to remove information that might identify specific athletes. Hines’ article reported on his experience on dating and hookup apps Bumble, Grindr, Jack’d and Tinder in the Olympic Village.

“The Daily Beast does not do this lightly,” the second note, timestamped 9:27 PM ET, reads. “As shared in our editor’s note earlier today, we initially thought swift removal of any identifying characteristics and better clarification of our intent was the adequate way to address this. Our initial reaction was that the entire removal of the piece was not necessary. We were wrong. We’re sorry.”

The Daily Beast went on to say it didn’t “uphold a deep set” of its values with the article. “These values—which include standing up to bullies and bigots, and specifically being a proudly, steadfastly supportive voice for LGBT people all over the world—are core to our commitment to journalism and to our commitment to serving our readers,” the note reads.

The note also says the article wasn’t just one person’s fault. “As a newsroom, we succeed together and we fail together, and this was a failure on The Daily Beast as a whole, not a single individual,” the note continues. “The article was not intended to do harm or degrade members of the LGBT community, but intent doesn’t matter, impact does. Our hope is that removing an article that is in conflict with both our values and what we aspire to as journalists will demonstrate how seriously we take our error.”

“We were wrong,” the note ends. “We will do better.”

iMediaEthics wrote to the Daily Beast earlier for more information about this incident but still hasn’t heard back. We’ll update with any new information.